Monday, April 27, 2009

I just learned today that our last remaining dog, Amber, has intestinal cancer and should be put down by the end of the week.

Naturally, this has pretty much wrecked me, and the rest of the week is shot to hell.

Because of this, I'm putting Curse/Or on hiatus. It's hard to write a story where the protagonist is a cancer mage when a loved one dies of the damned disease.

So I'll get back to it... when I feel like it, quite frankly.

That said, if I ever do finish the book and get it published, I'm going to donate a percentage of the proceeds to the National Cancer Foundation. I was planning on announcing this anyway (just seems like the karmically right thing to do after all) and now seems a good time.

This is another one of the ever present dangers of living in Hello Kitty Hell among the fanatics - no matter how bizarre or wrong something is, they can only see “cute” when Hello Kitty is placed on it. I’m just thankful that there are no more movies coming out because she would likely make a costume like that and attend…

Thursday, April 23, 2009

I apologize for how late this is, and how erratic I've been with updating. Writing an action sequence with magic is harder than I thought. Just because I can visualize it perfectly doesn't mean it makes sense to the reader...

"LOL," announced the girl. "ENDCAT HAZ ENDED JOO." She pivoted smoothly to her left, humming tunelessly as she took careful aim at the still-stunned Esther's head.

"You...!" gasped Yarrow. He was on the floor next to Esther, his hands clawing at the clutter of the broken dishes around him in a feeble attempt to end his disorientation. The girl brightened visibly at this, squatting by his head to regard him curiously. Her grin was feral, slender body quivering with predatory glee.

"YA ME RLY." She wasn't shouting, but every word that came from her mouth seemed to be at full volume. She poked him in the cheek with the muzzle of her hot pink weapon. The action was careless, whimsical, like a child poking a strange object with a stick. "WAT U WANT? U CAN HAZ LAST WISH."

Teresa's body spasmed, as if being given CPR through repeated, vicious kicks to the chest. Nicotine coursed through her bloodstream, the adrenaline substitute jumpstarting her body with the fierceness of a habit that would not, could not, be denied. The roaring darkness receded from the edge of her vision, the Cancer magic claiming another life in exchange for sparing hers.

(On the other side of the restaurant, a short-order cook who had been smoking all his adult life coughed twice, clutched his chest, and died as the burgeoning tumor within his lungs increased a thousandfold in volume before metastasizing and devouring his heart. He was thirty-two. )

She felt like she had just walked up thirty flights of stairs. There was a concrete block on her chest, and each breath was agony. Her arms were wooden, her fingers lifeless cigarettes. Ash was in her mouth and the taste of burnt filters filled her nostrils. Her eyes ached with the yellow-brown stain of nicotine.

The girl's back was to Teresa, crouched beside Yarrow's head. Next to him, Esther moaned. The child assassin casually drew a second pistol from her bag and aimed it at the older woman, her back arched in anticipation of the kill. Her butt wriggled back and forth, as if she possessed an invisible tail and it was twitching from side to side.

Tommy would be about his age, Teresa realized. Another dumb kid, another mother's precious son, another stupid, senseless death…

The rage returned. In that moment, Teresa was gone, consumed by all the anger and the guilt and the rage of the past two decades. Her sickness was forgotten, burnt away by the rush of emotion. What remained was something pure, primal in its direction and purpose.

"Bitch," spat The Camel, "I will fucking smoke your ass." She sparked the lighter through the denim of her jeans pocket, pouring all her emotion into its ignition, half expecting she herself would catch and burn.

The girl shimmered slightly, a heat haze wreathing her in an infernal halo, and then the restaurant became God's own ashtray as he ground out Satan's flaming ass on the dining room floor. The hot, sharp smell of scorched plastic stung the eyes and seared the lungs, and then the girl was screaming the high, shrill note of a cat with a burning ember tied to its tail as every hair, every piece of plastic and every scrap of clothing on her body smoldered and threatened to combust.

Monday, April 13, 2009

It wasn't until much later that Teresa learned the exploding cat was actually a plush toy with a stun grenade stuffed inside. Off-balance and taken utterly by surprise, the force of the flash-bang knocked her over, right side striking the edge of the table with enough force to make her wince.

As she fell, the serrated pain of a cracked rib tearing her inward from bone to lung to tumor, she knew -- with an animal certainty which bypassed all thought -- that everyone in the dining room had seen the flash and heard the bang. They had shared the experience. They were all interconnected with her.

They had all been breathing her air, just like the inmates at Frontera.

The magic flared within her at the speed of instinct, burning from her tumor outward through the searing pain in her side, spreading her blindness and deafness and disorientation across a network of arcane second-hand smoke and into the two dozen customers and waitstaff.

As one, the entire population of the restaurant coughed wetly. Their lifetime chances of contracting cancer increased by a statistically significant percentage.

And then Teresa could act again, shoulder-rolling as she hit the floor, coming up into a kind of half-crouch. She could see the girl crouched beneath the table, wiping her mouth with the left sleeve of a bright pink cardigan, right hand buried inside a matching vinyl purse-slash-tote bag. Their eyes met.

The girl looked to be about 12 years old, but the eyes that looked back at Teresa weren't those of a child. They were hard and deep and dark, as black as her glossy Asian hair, a gaze made of obsidian knives. They were the sockets that remained after her innocence had been scooped out with a melon baller.

They were the same eyes Teresa had seen in the mirror every day for the past twenty years.

"OH HAI THAR," the girl exclaimed, and pulled a pistol from her bag. It was the exact same shade of obnoxious pink as her purse, except in anodized aluminum, and the kitty face etched along its extended barrel matched the picture on the girl's dress. She cocked her head to the side and smiled brightly, waving cheerfully with her left hand asthe laser spot underneath the gun barrel traced a hot pink line to Teresa's heart.

"U DIEZ NAO KTHXBAI."

To Be Continued....

*This phrase is courtesy of the Verwirrung blog and is used with the permission of Episkopos Cain.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

A special present for Salem, who reveres Doctor Who with near-religious fervor:

1On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' " 8Then they remembered his words.

9When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. 10It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. 11But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. 12Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened. -- Luke 24, 1-12

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Geek Related has finally weighed in here. It's weird that I managed to scoop him.

More discussion, as well as a chillingly plausible insight into why WotC is doing this, can be found here.

The current topic of discussion among we grognards is now "Will WotC be stupid and try to cut out Amazon as well?" If they do, then mark my words: They cut their own throats in the same action.I wouldn't wager on a brick-and-mortar distribution in even the best of economies, let alone in a recession which has companies failing left and right.

Of course, some folks this is a preliminary move towards using a DRM-based document out of WotC's servers. Given Wizards' abysmal track record for online initiatives, I find this highly plausible and equally doomed to failure.

Wizards of the Coast has notified us that we may no longer sell or distribute their PDF products. Accordingly, after April 6 at 11:59 PM Pacific time, Wizards of the Coast PDFs will no longer be available for purchase on paizo.com; after noon on April 7, you will no longer be able to download Wizards of the Coast PDFs that you have already purchased, so please make sure you have downloaded all purchased PDFs by that time.

The fact that WotC/Hasbro is acting to prevent the legal sale of watermarked PDFs in an attempt to combat piracy is so stupid that my italics key just broke.

Unfortunately, due to recent findings of illegal copying and online distribution (piracy) of our products, Wizards of the Coast has decided to cease the sales of online PDFs. We are exploring other options for digitial distribution of our content and as soon as we have any more information I'll get it to you.

Hey Wizards, you wanted to attract the WoW crowd. Well guess what? You found them. What, you didn't think that the Wired Generation would find a way to torrent your stuff?

And now you're removing the ability to purchase your books through e-commerce (retailers of hardcopy like Amazon aside, of course). You're really gambling on this brick-and-mortar thing, aren't you? Just like you gambled on attracting more new players to 4e than those you alienated? Yes, that worked out so well for you...

Analogy time, just to drive home how dumb this is: It's like the MPAA saying "In an effort to prevent piracy of our motion pictures, we are ceasing publication of DVDs. If you want to see our movies, you have to go to theaters."

If you ever needed proof that 4th Edition was a financial failure, here it is. They're losing money, so they blame it on piracy, and then cut themselves out of half the market. If it's not a failure already, it will be soon. Mark my words.

Monday, April 6, 2009

First, let it be said that I genuinely liked the movie. I'm not a rabid fangirl that howls for blood when something is changed in adaptation from page to screen -- in fact, I think the movie ending made far more sense than the book -- but I sincerely wanted it to eat The Dark Knight's lunch and instead all we got was an okay-to-good superhero movie with some political overtones.

But what's done is done, and we can't change things like getting a better actress to play Silk Spectre. However, I feel the movie can be improved by cutting out certain things. I may be late to this party, but I've given it some thought, and I think all of these could be easily done before the movie goes to DVD.

1) Reduce the length of the fight in the Comedian's apartment. Ok, look, the comic book takes all of seven panels to kill the Comedian -- ten if you count watching him fall to his death. I realize that this the opening of the movie and you want to hook the audience, and I like a good fight sequence as much as anyone, but MY GOD it dragged on. After a while it just became senseless brutality in the name of "coolness".

Look at how the trailer below depicts the murder. That's actually about what the comic shows. Its run time is about 20 seconds. Now I recognize that's far too short for a key scene in the movie, but erring on the side of brevity is always good for a movie that 2.5 hours long.

2) Tone down/delete the "relevant" musicThere was exactly ONE piece of music (set, as opposed to background) that I liked, and it was "All Along the Watchtower" because its tone and volume seemed to mesh perfectly with the scene. Everything else didn't:

"Sound of Silence" during the Comedian's funeral? Too damn loud, ironically enough, and it distracted from the solemnity of the scene. An instrumental piece would have worked much better here.

Likewise the "Ride of the Valkyries" bit. I'm sorry, I adore Wagner, but ever since Apocalypse Now that piece has become associated with Vietnam in an ironic, post-modern sense and it only undercuts the seriousness of the scene.

The obligatory "OMG WE'RE IN THE 80s LETS PLAY 80s MUSIC TO SHOW WE'RE IN THE 80s". OK, I will admit that "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" was clever, even if horribly forced, but "99 Luftbaloons"? Really?

And then there's that rendition of "Hallelujah"... I guess I'll just declare myself a heretic now by saying I hate, Hate, HATE Leonard Cohen's version of it. Speaking of which...

3) For the love of God, cut the sex sceneI am not a prude. Anyone who has talked to me knows I like sex. I like looking at it, and I like talking about it. But this scene.... it goes on for too long and (worst) is not sexy. Malin Ackerman getting pistoned, whee. A porn actress would have actually worked better here, because they at least sound like they're getting off on the rote mechanics of the act. This sequence took five veryslender panels in the comic to depict, and the movie would do well to emulate that. And where the hell was Holiday's "You're My Thrill" in all of this?

4) Cut Nite-Owl's "NOOOOOOO!"Because it wasn't cool when Vader did it, either. I'd prefer his presence in the doorway be completely excised, but if that's too hard to do, just removing the vocal track and having him slump silently to his knees will work.

5) This space intentionally left blank because I know I left something out. Also, Law of Fives.

There you go. Just some cutting, and you've raised "Watchmen" from a B-minus to a B-plus, at the very least.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

This post is actually two days late, but that's because I'm a slackass artist who lives inside her head far too much to be healthy. Anyway...

Friday was the birthday of Nathan Tamayo, my #1 Fan. He started out as an Internet Stalker (but only in the best of ways, I assure you), posting tons of comments on my blog. Some time later, we got to talking, and he graduated to Internet Boyfriend status (i.e., that guy who I can get to do things for me by batting my eyelashes and asking sweetly). Eventually, we learned enough about each other that we developed a kind of rapport, and he started calling me "jei-jei", which is Mandarin for "big sister."

Obviously, the boy is smitten with me.

Clearly, he's not right in the head. :)

But that's okay, because most of my best friends are crazy, too.

Recently, Nathan celebrated his 25th birthday (Go, Quarter-Century Boy!) and he did something very sweet: he gave a book to those of us who made a difference in his life, thanking us and explaining why we're special to him. With his permission, I'm going to quote some relevant passages from his book, Superheroes, or: You Know the Old Saying.

From the introduction:

I don't know how to thank you all so much for keeping me up and helping me out, so I thought something like this would be a fun way to do it. I hope you enjoy it, at least a little bit.

The following pages are a testament to your abilities, weaknesses, and your friendship. Few people made it into these pages, and I want to let you know ahead of time that while some of you come later, some of you have less space, and some of you are not in it at all, but you all important.

If you are holding a copy of this book in your hands: I could not have survived without all of you.

Ah, jei-jei. The older sister I enver wanted or asked for, but got anyway. I found you through your writing and it still inspires me to this day. You're always looking for more and more readers, but I just want you to read the following:

I want to become a writer not just because I want to be like Joss Whedon, but also because, like him, I want to touch lives. If I can just touch one life, change one heart, open one pair of eyes, I will feel successful as a writer.

You've touched my life with your writing.

So, in my eyes, you are a success. I'm sorry it won't pay your bills, but I hope it means something to you.

With that said, you're chaotic. I never know what to expect of you, and that's why I have chosen your Soul to be that of Eris. Sometimes I think you do and say things just to see my reaction.

Thanks for the apple.

Now some of you may think it the height of crassness for me to post my own laudation in this blog (and you're probably right), but I didn't do it to stroke my ego. I did it because Nathan made me a wonderful, special gift, and I wanted to make sure as many people as possible can see it. This is the equivalent of me going, "Hey everyone! Let me show you what I got!"

What makes this gift extra-special -- like it needed a reason -- is that I've never told him, or anyone else on this blog, but I always wanted to be a superhero. I always wanted to touch lives, and save them, but I couldn't figure out a way to do that within my span of limited abilities, so I became a writer instead.

And here he goes and says that I'm a superhero because of my writing, that it touched his life and saved him. That is the most wonderful and perfect gift I've ever received, and I don't think anything will ever top that.

I'm crying now, Nathan, but they're tears of joy. I'm crying big-sister tears. Thank you so much for being my little brother.

Now I'm going to leave you with two words of wisdom, one from me and one from Eris.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Gibson captured the flash, nearly a half century earlier, Hessestarted design of the depths.

The "Magister Ludi" says little of the actual mechanics of thegame. It does provide a sketch of a symbolic structure which canlink "semi-formal systems" (eg. musical notes, alegebra, pidgen(primitive) English sets ....). Since his time, we haveexplored a board that can begin this task. We call it "thecomputer".

It allows masses of people to experiment with various "glass beadrelationships".

Hesses work has other elements of usefullness. The bulk of thebulk is devoted to analysis of bureaucratic knowlege structuresof an essentially monkish format in a mercantile society. Hesucceeds in capturing many elements in traditional systems andtheir wearing on the individual pyche.

Hesses earlier work focuses more attention on the pyche. As hisarchetype "low tundra lobo" starts to interface with someGibsonian primal circuitry.

In looking at systems, a common perceptual trend is to see animperfect "holistic vision" and then focus on detail which oftengrabs all of our attention.

It sometimes helps to look at the wisdom of our ancestors. Inthe first false dawn of cyberspace (of which surrealism is anexample), Hesse layed out a 3 level sketch.

3. The "upper level" is a set of books which chronicleenvironment against skull combined with journeys to the east. Water against stone in the Paz-ia (Octavio) icongraphy.

2. Far more sketchy. The model of a society. It takes detailonly in the glassbead monument. Interesting enough his model ofintellect creates two academic schools. One is Catholic, theother secular. This provides to the debate on "The MagicMountain" (Manns not neumann).

1. A few of the mechanics at the "architecturial level". Theability of a lectures on systems theory to employ improv teaceremonies. The ability of aspiring players to tag new piecesonto the original parts.

There is one more system. This is a "meta system".

0. You, the primal "neuron", the "free human" who can examinethe Hesseian structure and modify it while adding customextensions. The following is one of many possible "negative"(flip to new set) developments. Note the reversal of "."

.1 One striking thing about the "German pair" (Hesse-mann) is its"patriarchial" structure. The "model" appears to stress males(in different ways). "Neo-Neutopian" thought would strive toenact the "feminine side".

.2 One can go into many possible levels from 0.1, but aJungian approach would have some men give voice to "anima" whilesome women give vent to "animo" and perhaps vice versa. One canstrive to lay a "coed" onto the Anglo-German forms which act as"primal paradigm-ia" of the Neu-America (el norte) universitysystem. Internet is the place where we introduce and mantainthis "bureaucratic viri".

One sees the truth of the fundamental Gibsonian approach ofconflict with the medium. Gibson is also correct in recognizingthat institutions control the "backbone(s)", but he draws thewrong conclusions. Institutions have raw power, but onlyrudimentary technique. Smaller users may benefit from sometechniques, but the use of "wave surfers" is not to "crack" thisrelatively feeble infrastructure, but instead to "de-ice" the"hidden structures of reality" and integrate them into the"emerging global mind". We are cracking our "selves" (or perhapsour "perceptions of self"), we "real cyberpunks"(TM) use thisspace to glide into "ontology" (psedo (necessary for finitemachines) reality).

You may now map Jamesian (William) flows of consciousness. Thishas been a literary experiment. Please continue it for the loveof neu neu topia.

NO CARRIER

::LOW LEVEL PROGRAMMERS DELIMITER::

This discussion (briefly extended to alt.surrealism) is part of a"broad course" or "coarse broad" discussion centered inalt.cyberspace for "systems analysis" and "alt.alien.visitors"for pragmatic experimentation.

There is at least one link between this "alien paradigma" and theHesse-Mann model. The conflict between "institutionalizedknowlege systems" is in Octavian terms that between religion andphilosophy. On a larger map (with Paz partially drew), Islamseems to have chosen religion, the European centeredcosmopolitianism seems to have leaned more towards philosophy. Inalt.alien.visitors these two archetypes (stone on water) arerepresented by the Illuminati and Knights Templar. The goal isto draw prevalent conspiracy theory into a rough historicalcontext.

::THE PLANNED IMPERIALISTA::

If we can build a "cadre" of "half historians", then Knighttemplar bead games can be used to enrich "alt.illuminati".

::END LOW LEVEL PROGRAMMERS DELIMITER::

::"Newbies" Only::

::INTRODUCTION TO PARSING::

Signed: (((d))octress (Andrea "hawk lady" Chen (where a hawk is an evolved form of dragon)) (Bend it bend it but don't break it) ((bennett)) (on off <>) )

reduces into (in neu-lithp) <>

Signed: dbennett .

-Andrea "I may not be real" Chen-

::**:: A troll to John McCarthy in "primitive" neu-Minskiacommunity of mind.

The notation is a slight extension of the original fiftiesconstruct with (( )) used to desiginate a "high level" member.Finding the "2 strings" (d, bennett) marked by (( )) gives the"text title" which appears after "Signed:" (which is a "titletype").

::*:: Pun to Beneton(TM) slogan.

::BEGIN CARRIER:: (

okay dear reader, you are "on" (signed: ac) begin <> )

::pulsing:: a referance to other texts in the "total cyberspaceintroduction". In a frequently used analogy, each humanindividual is one or more "neurons". A "post" is a "neuronpulse", a "thread" is a somewhat linked series of such events.

A slightly different terminology is used. For example a "button"is often used to mean a "glass bead" in the lower level in thehouse of hesse.

Regular readers of alt.cyberspace might know what I mean if theyhave carefully followed the "neu-coder ring"(TM) sketched in thatgroup.

If there is demand, important pieces will be repeated in acdiscussion.

::ac:: alt.cyberspace, andrea chen, alternating currents (a bookof essays by the last living major associate of Breton (OctavioPaz) and the only "classical surrealist" to win a Nobel Prize).

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